What is Graduate School about? Goals and Survival Skills

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• What is Graduate School about? Goals and
  Survival Skills

Acknowledgement CRA-W Graduate Cohort Anne
Condon, University of British Columbia
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Outline

• How to succeed in grad school
• How to manage common issues

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Important to realize

• Class performance is not as important as before
  but you still have to do well
• In research, no-one knows the answer!
• Youre in charge of your education and career
• not yet sure of your destination
• need help apprentice in research
• Colleagues you meet can be lifelong friends

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Research Success

• "If you want to make important discoveries,
  work on important problems - P.B. Medawar
• Find problems that will have an impact and are
  fun to work on

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Apprenticeship

• Learn from all aspects of grad school
• Classes engage in discussions, ask questions!
• Projects develop assessment, writing skills
• Seminars learn how to frame an idea
• ... and ask more questions!
• People sound out ideas - colleagues
• Papers learn the art of reading a paper

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Apprenticeship - cont

• Attend seminars
• Attend Ph.D. proposal presentations
• Attend Ph.D. defenses
• Broaden knowledge
• Might find an interesting topic or see a
  relationship
• Listen to how others ask questions
• Pay attention to how people give presentations

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Select courses and profs strategically

• Get project experience
• Learn about likely research areas
• Learn about important techniques
• Learn about the profs ... and impress them!

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Communicate technical material well

• Distill complex ideas down to a few clear,
  concise statements
• Volunteer to present in seminars
• Get (and give) feedback
• Write multiple drafts of papers
• Practice, practice, practice!
• By yourself
• In front of friends and family
• In front of colleagues

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Manage your time

• Prioritize
• Decide what is most important
• Make time to think about and do research!
• Eliminate context-switching overhead
• For TA duties, respond to emails in batches,
  rather than being interrupt-driven
• For research, allocate several contiguous hours
  eliminate distractions
• Plan ahead for departmental milestones
• qualifying exams, breadth requirements, finding
  an advisor

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Not that you expect to, but...

• Sometimes unanticipated situations arise when
  working closely with others...
• Consensual relationships (or close personal
  relationships) with faculty are risky, due to
  inherently unequal positions of power
• Best case scenario
• not a good forum for experiencing evaluating a
  relationship
• Worst case scenario
• uncomfortable at best
• may color what other faculty think of you
• may compromise your career
• faculty partner will stay but you?

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Always believe in yourself

• its normal to lose confidence sometimes
• if you always excel, youre probably not taking
  enough risks
• find others who believe in you too
• ask about scholarships, travel awards
• suggest paper deadlines
• celebrate each step forward!

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Outline

• How to succeed in grad school
• Some common issues and how to manage them

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Adjusting to grad school

• Everybody arrives with different strengths
  experiences
• But really, they are all in the same boat
• With practice, you can get up to speed
• Grad school is very bursty
• At times, it will demand enormous amounts of time
• Give yourself time to recover between the bursts

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Growing as a researcher

• A major transition happens in grad school
• Classes are finally done
• Now, you have to define your own research agenda
• Self-driven schedule
• Having a good support network will smooth this
  transition
• Build relationships with mentors during first 2
  years
• Turn to them for support and inspiration
• Re-introduce structure to your environment
• reading groups
• monthly social lunches to build a sense of
  community with peers

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You are in charge of your graduate career...

• You need to make things happen
• You CAN make things happen
• and if you need it, help is there. Use it!